Cancer (neoplasia) is characterized by deregulated cell growth and cell division. Cancers include carcinomas that are tumors arising in a tissue originating from endoderm or exoderm, and sarcomas that originate from mesoderm (Darnell, J., Molecular Cell Biology, Third Ed., W.H. Freeman, NY, 1990). Solid tumors are found in nervous system, breast, retina, lung, skin, kidney, liver, pancreas, genito-urinary tract, gastrointestinal tract, cancers of bone, and cancers of hematopoietic origin including various types of leukemia and lymphoma.
A primary effort in cancer research is directed toward early detection of malignancy, and a reliable assessment of the severity of that malignancy. That has included an emphasis on determining the presence of precancerous or cancerous cells. Those cells are typically analyzed, for example, for protein markers, for nucleic acid markers, or for chromosomal abnormalities.
A problem with those methods is that they focus solely on genetic aspects of cancer by looking for some form of genomic instability. Those methods overlook non-genetic factors that may play a role in cancer development and aggressiveness. Accordingly, such methods have limited diagnostic value for a large percentage of the population due to the fact that a diagnosis is based upon using only known genomic instabilities and does not account for cancer causing genomic instabilities that have not previously been associated with a particular type of cancer.